But happier times were almost within view, though still hid behind the glare of those orgies of the unclean. From 1660 to 1688 does not seem a very long time in the annals of a nation, nor even in the life of one of ourselves. Twenty-eight years have elapsed since the Revolution in Paris which placed Louis Philippe upon the throne; and the young man of twenty at that time is not very old yet. But when men or nations are cheated in the object of their hopes, it does not take long to turn disappointment into hatred. The Restoration of 1660 was to bring back the golden age of the first years of James,--the prosperity without the tyranny, the old hereditary rule without its high pretensions, the manliness of the English yeoman without his tendency to fanatical innovation. And instead of this Arcadia there was nothing to be seen but a kingdom without dignity, a king without honesty, and a people without independence. England was no longer the arbiter of European differences, as in the earlier reigns, nor dominator of all the nations, as when the heavy sword of Cromwell was uneasy in its sheath. It was not even a second-rate power: its capital had been insulted by the Dutch; its monarch was pensioned by the French; its religion was threatened by the Pope; the old animosities between England and Scotland were unarranged; and the point to be remembered in your review of the Seventeenth Century is that in the years from the Restoration to the Revolution we had touched the basest string of humility. We were neither united at home nor respected abroad. We had few ships, little commerce, and no public spirit. France revenged Crecy and Poictiers and Agincourt, by dressing our kings in her livery; and the degraded monarchs pocketed their wages without feeling their humiliation. Therefore, as the highest point we have hitherto stood upon was when Elizabeth saw the destruction of the Armada, the lowest was undoubtedly that when we submitted to the buffoonery of Charles and the bloodthirstiness of James.
But far more remarkable, as a characteristic of this century, than the lowering of the rank of England in relation to foreign states, is the rise, for the first time in Europe, of a figure hitherto unknown,--a true, unshackled, and absolute king, and that in the least likely of all positions and in the person of the least likely man. This was the appearance on the throne of France of Louis the Fourteenth. Other monarchs, both in England and France, had attained supreme power,--supreme, but not independent. No one had hitherto been irresponsible to some other portions of the State. The strongest of the feudal kings was held in check by his nobility,--the greatest of the Tudors by Parliament and people. Declarations, indeed, had frequently been made that God's anointed were answerable to God alone. But of the two loudest of these declaimers, John, who said,--